


Stuck In Rewind

by Up_sideand_down



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Death, Decapitation mentions, Living the Same Day Over and Over, Swords, The Nibelheim Incident, Violence, falls - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26206672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Up_sideand_down/pseuds/Up_sideand_down
Summary: Sephiroth caused the Nibelheim Incident when he lit Nibelhiem on fire after learning about how he was created and was finally stopped by a Trooper named Cloud. At least, that's what happened the first time. Sephiroth's been living through several different versions by now.
Comments: 25
Kudos: 78





	Stuck In Rewind

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know if I intend to continue writing this, but it got stuck in my head and now it's out. Enjoy?

Sephiroth looked down at the other end of Masamune, into blue eyes that glowed with more than just anger and hate. 

“Impossible,” he breathed out. 

The blonde trooper, kept hold of the blade in his torso, uncaring of the cutting and tearing into his gloves. Using his entire body, turning a little to get a better angle in the reactor room, he threw Sephiroth. Masamune finally slid out of the troopers body, letting him fall back against the broken glass container. Sephiroth lost his own grip on his sword when he collided against the side of the room. He kept hold of Mother’s head…and then he fell. Down to the glowing depths below. 

He cradled mother closer, he could die like this. He could die so long as they stayed together. If they were together…he could come back. 

He jerked up before he hit the mako. 

A knock came again. 

“Sephiroth, we’ve gotta go over orders again,” a voice said on the other side. Sephiroth looked around. Looked through a window to a town that should have just been ash. 

Nibelhiem. 

Sephiroth?” the voice said again, but not any voice. Zack. Zack should have been half dead in the reactor in the mountains. How was he here?

“Impossible,” Sephiroth said, “How can-“ He stood, looking further out the window. 

The town was completely intact. How could it? It was on fire…

“No,” he said, “It cannot have been a dream.” 

“Sephiroth?” Zack called again, tried at the doorknob. Sephiroth shook himself. If anything this had to be the dream. How else could he be here. 

“Yo Seph!” Zack said, knocking harder. “Sleepin’ in? We gotta job to do!” Sephiroth glared at the door, at how the person behind it just…could forget. How could the whole world…

Zack took a step back when Sephiroth opened the door. 

“Sephiroth…” he took another, “Are you…what’s going on?” Sephiroth ignored him. The reactor. That’s how he would know. If he went up to the reactor and mother was still there, still whole…he would know. 

Mother was what was important, then and now. He ignored Zack trying to follow. None of them were important. 

He stopped when he saw blonde hair getting tucked into a helmet. 

_Blonde hair poking out from the helmet just above the buster sword impaling him against mother._

_Blue eyes glaring from the bottom of the stairs_

_Blonde hair matted with sweat and blood moving as it threw him down the reactor_

_“_ You,” Sephiroth said. He heard Zack trying to talk to him still as he crossed the in to the two sets of troopers, both snapping to a salute. 

Then Zack yelling as Sephiroth grabbed the blonde by his neck and lifted him. 

“You,” Sephiroth said. 

“Sir…please,” the voice was right (“ _Tifa…my mom…the whole town!_ ”) he was the one. 

He was the one who was able to stop him. 

“SEPHIROTH!” Zack roared as Sephiroth threw him out of a window and into the town square. The blonde’s body hit the water tower hard, then crumpled to the ground. He didn’t move. Sephiroth had just felt the bite of Masamune in his hand when something struck him hard from behind, hard enough to push him through the hole he had made with the trooper’s body. 

Zack turned the Buster Sword blade out. He’d just struck with the blunt end. 

“Don’t make me do this,” Zack said, anger filling his voice. That light, the same light that had filled the troopers eyes in the reactor, now shone out of Zack’s. 

“Don’t make me do to you what Angeal made me do to him!” Zack practically screamed, “You’re not the Sephiroth I know.” 

_You’re not the Sephiroth I once knew._ It echoed in his mind. He had beat Zack then. He should be able to now. 

Masamune struck the Buster Sword. What should have sparked and glanced off instead caught and locked together. Sephiroth started to push Zack away, but Zack kept pressing forward. 

It shouldn’t be like this. It wasn’t like this before. Why was Zack holding him here. Zack wasn’t that strong…the trooper wasn’t that strong…no one was…

The lock ended in Zack’s favor. The buster’s blunt end pressed against his windpipe. 

“For Gaia’s sake, yield Sephiroth!” Zack said, sounding like himself. 

“Cloud!” A woman’s voice shrieked. Sephiroth saw people rushing to the trooper, saw Zack looking up. He tried to use the moment to push off, gain the upper hand. 

Zack was ready. 

He felt the Buster start to slice into his chest. 

Then he awoke with a start in a bed. 

Someone was knocking at the door. 

* * *

Three attempts later, all thwarted by Zack, Sephiroth began to think of strategy. He waited longer, waited until they were just outside of the town. The two troopers, Zack and the guide girl. Both troopers went down quickly. Zack wasn’t ready enough. The guide girl ran to the bridge. She didn’t matter as much. She had barely put up a fight the first time. And she didn’t even have his sword this time

He remembered too late what happened last time on this bridge. 

The girl held on when it snapped, just like last time, and he did as well. He looked up in time to see that same light, the anger, the hate, the pure wrath in the girl’s eyes this time. 

She pulled herself up with her arms, and then brought her leg down on the bridge lattices below her, snapping them as if they were twigs. 

The rope Sephiroth held came free. 

He woke again in the bed in the inn. Zack knocked immediately after. 

* * *

He lit the town again. It went up in embers quickly. The people scattered and fell before him, just as they had the first time he’d done it. 

Zack had fallen. Both troopers were wounded. The girl was not to be seen. There was no one left to stop him. 

It struck him just about the temple, hard enough to nearly bring him to the ground. The flames spun around him and he couldn’t discern up from down. He looked back, saw a woman with a bloody rock. 

Not just any woman, the woman who came to the trooper. His…mother? She had died so easily before…why now? 

“How…” Sephiroth breathed out. The woman hit him again before he could react. She was kicking away masamune now and he felt so sluggish. How had she managed to hit him to so perfectly daze him? How had any of them beat him at all. He’d slain a dragon a day ago. 

The woman backed away. He heard something crackling with fire snap above him just before he started awake. 

When Zack knocked on his door again, Sephiroth looked out at the town, wondering which one of the people out there was going to stop him the next time.

* * *

He went to the library and locked himself in. He poured over all the books again, just in case one had a reason for why this was happening. If there was a reason he wasn’t dying…why everything kept starting over. 

“Is this my own personal hell?” he asked a long dead specimen in a jar. It didn’t respond. The difference this time is Zack and the trooper didn’t interrupt him. No one saw him come here, they had to reason to come at all. He tore the library apart looking for different answers. There were none. All said the same. 

Then he began to tear it apart. Pages crumpled to the ground, book spines cracked and lost hold. Every book that held no answer ended up beneath his feet for daring to not answer him. 

He breathed heavily as the chaos calmed around him. He also felt a strange calm, he had always tried to end this with violence. Perhaps if he kept his head, kept the anger out of it…perhaps that would let him out. 

He needed to stay calmer, let the anger subside only momentarily and then perhaps he could finish what he started without it all starting over. 

He focused on his breathing, took a seat and let his eyes close. He realized a little too late how tired he really was. He had to have been down here at least a day. Maybe more. 

He only realized that sleep was overtaking him when he woke up back at the inn…with Zack knocking on the door again. 

* * *

He’d lost count of the amount of times he’d tried to escape by now. He’d murdered every person in the town at least twice…and been killed by most of them once. It didn’t matter how it ended. Peace, fire, blood, avalanche, each time he woke back in the inn mere moments before Zack would come to fetch him. 

Now he let it play out as the first time did, he went to the reactor, followed Tifa the guide and let Cloud live when the other trooper fell. He did not say much to Zack. 

But finally he got here. He could only get here by following the first day’s rule. He had to let it play out. He saw Genesis heard him start to speak and start this whole bloody mess…and he stopped playing along. 

“Not now,” Sephiroth told him, “I need to see something.” He brushed past them all, straight to the door to the reactor core. He tore it open, now letting that rage sink in. He took it out on the shrine of mother, throwing it behind him without a care. 

She was still there, all of her. He remembered so clearly cradling her head close to him the first time…but she was here. She was not the cause of it…she had been his last idea…

Genesis and Zack watched as Sephiroth laughed. 

“This never will end will it?” Sephiroth asked them. 

Then to their horror, Sephiroth stepped off the main catwalk and into the reactor below. 

* * *

Sephiroth woke up at the inn in Nibelheim. 

“Go away,” he said before Zack had a chance to knock. 


End file.
